Malden High has introduce the new CP Math teacher, Evan Hughes. This will be Hughes’ first year of teaching full time. Hughes brought his teaching experience in New York to the table.
As a child, Hughes’ had many great experiences with his previous math teachers, influencing him to teach Math. As Hughes fondly recounted his fourth as well as fifth grade math teacher, he stated “[they] did a lot of cool stuff, not traditional worksheets but math games to help learn math ” His fourth and fifth grade teacher has definitely influenced how Hughes will teach as he explains a card game which he describes the 24 card game where it consists of having four numbers on a card and attempt to make 24 with the numbers on the card.
Despite his focus on math, Hughes focused on a specific genre of math that is focused on English Language Learners (ELL). When Cara Joyce recounted her first impression of Hughes, she said “he immediately was sharing an interest with working with English Language Learners, some people are more enthusiastic, more excited about working with English Language Learners then others. And so to see that true excitement from him, interest, desire to work with that population of students was really positive in my mind.”
Hughes is bilingual, speaking Spanish fluently. With that, he is able to reach to some students and help them. Replacing Berenice Diaz, who is also bilingual, was something that was “kind of nice, there was some symmetry there” Joyce expressed positively.
Originally from New York City, Hughes earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree at New York University, then enrolled in classes at Boston University. His knowledge of mathematics and the content that he teaches was something that was spoken very highly of by Chris Mastrangelo in which he stated “not just math so to speak but the history of math. Famous mathematicians, and you can see that excitement come through.”
When in the classroom, Hughes is still “learning” said Laura Gould. Hughes has began incorporating good routines in class such as swapping out phones for calculators, and adding more student discussion questions.
The efforts made by Hughes seems to be working, “Every week, things get better and better and it’s really awesome to see” Gould started, “[he is] generally somebody who has a lot of ideas, very open to listening to feedback and using that feedback to create some new lessons, and continue to explain, “[he is] definitely, kind of absorbs everything [that is] going around him, [he is] learning so much and [it is] kind of cool to see that.”
Hughes recounted how he had a teacher’s assistant in one of his courses, who talked about how like math, history education is lacking which that led him to look into it. “So whenever [he] see[s] a math formula, or a specific problem, [he] take[s] a look into what was the origin of that.” Hughes continues even further, diving into the people behind the math, and how they contributed to the development of math.
